• Home
  • About
    • Jazz Beyond Jazz
    • Howard Mandel
    • Contact
  • AJBlogs
  • ArtsJournal

Jazz Beyond Jazz

Howard Mandel's Urban Improvisation

Surprises and stalwarts in an NYC jazz weekend

Five acts, all jazz headliners, in 3 hours at the Jazz Foundation of America’s Loft Jazz Party, plus Chicago drummer-composer Mike Reed’s thrilling People, Places & Things quartet and alto saxist Darius Jones’ trio at Drom in the East Village — bountiful blues, soul, swing, groove, creativity, tradition, big names and newcomers in NYC on Saturday and Sunday. It’s like this all the time in the jazz capital of the universe, but good not to take it for granted.

loftjazzparty.jpeg

[Read more…]

Sonny the sax king

At age 80, Sonny Rollins is indisputably the greatest living jazz tenor saxophonist, proved last night throughout a 2-hour set at New York’s sold-out Beacon Theater in which harmolodic sage Ornette Coleman sat in, backed by drummer Roy Haynes and bassist Christian McBride, on “Tenor Madness.”  “Sonnymoon For Two”. Rollins was hunched and hobbled when he came onstage, but once he started blowing he stood upright and blasted his big bold sound with energy that brooked no diminishment of strength or inspiration, bending only to fire another fussilade of freshly wrought invention as if from his guts. 

Guest brassman Roy Hargrove paced Rollins melodically on “I Can’t Get Started” and one of Sonny’s vamp-based songs; Jim Hall had to tune up his guitar while starting to interact with Sonny on “In A Sentimental Mood,” but found his place, and Sonny’s standing band w/ guitarist Russell Malone, elec. bassist Bob Cranshaw, drummer Kobie Watkins and conga-player Sammy Figueroa was better than solid — but it was the Old Man himself who kept raising the stakes with gruff, hearty, spirited, virtuosic roars and runs. 

[Read more…]

Howard Mandel

I'm a Chicago-born (and after 32 years in NYC, recently repatriated) writer, editor, author, arts reporter for National Public Radio, consultant and nascent videographer -- a veteran freelance journalist working on newspapers, magazines and websites, appearing on tv and radio, teaching at New York University and elsewhere, consulting on media, publishing and jazz-related issues. I'm president of the Jazz Journalists Association, a non-profit membership organization devoted to using all media to disseminate news and views about all kinds of jazz.
My books are Future Jazz (Oxford U Press, 1999) and Miles Ornette Cecil - Jazz Beyond Jazz (Routledge, 2008). I was general editor of the Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz and Blues (Flame Tree 2005/Billboard Books 2006). Of course I'm working on something new. . . Read More…

@JazzMandel

Tweets by @jazzbeyondjazz

More Me

I'll be speaking:

JBJ Essentials

Archives

Return to top of page

an ArtsJournal blog

This blog published under a Creative Commons license